Exploring South Africa

All you need to scratch your travel itch, at your fingertips...

The idea behind this guide is to inspire you to explore our amazing country. We have highlighted the most defining activities and interests in the various regions and provinces, with extensive write-ups providing all the details you need to start exploring. There are well over 2000 items currently listed for you to explore!

We have also selected some of the best accommodation venues in South Africa for you to browse through in our accommodation guide. Most of them can be booked online in real time to make planning and booking your holiday a breeze.

South Africa has been the subject of dozens of coffee table books over the years, and one could hardly cover its vast beauty in less than that. But is can be overwhelming, and we often see travellers underestimate the scope of their travels.

In this guide, we have taken great care to select the best and most characteristic attractions and interests in each of South Africa's provinces and regions. We provide all the details you will need to go and explore them, including super-accurate GPS-points. We would be selling the provinces short to try and sum them up here, so we will leave you with but the slightest tease. For full details, navigate to the relevant landing pages, using the 'Province & Region' panel at the top left of this page.

Interesting people and wide open landscapes

A taste of the smorgasbord

The cool breeze skimming off the surface of the Atlantic carries with it a salty humidity and a caucus of seagulls. Their manic cackling is drowned out by the fury of the waves crashing against the rocky shore, much to the delight of the surfer who has just dropped off and is now paddling back out. The sky is as blue as the ocean is clear, and if you bake in the sun long enough that ocean becomes ever-so inviting. Blink.

The sun dips towards the horizon, and sets the dusty skies on fire. Bold arcs of red and orange slash through your field of view, and it seems somehow a fitting end to an intense day. The fierce battle for survival in the African bushveld, like the great works of days of yore, is both beautiful and bloody, tender and harsh. It seems as though every creature, great and small, has some arch nemesis lurking behind the next bush, and little wars rage as heatedly between the spider and the wasp as they do between the lion and the buffalo. Blink.

The humid air condenses at the tip of a leaf, and just before it drops, it glistens like a diamond, drawing your gaze. Sitting on the branch above the leaf, a paradise flycatcher sits calmly, staring beadily at you. It wiggles its magnificent tail once and is off, leaving you grinning despite the heat. Energised, you push on – for who knows what else this tropical jungle paradise will hold. Blink.

The red rock gleams in the fierce desert sun. Gnarled, twisted on a giant’s scale, you marvel at the forces that conspired to create this alien landscape, and you keep a suspicious eye out for the Mars Rover. The warm empty sand stretches out as far as the eye can see, and as you ponder the futility of vegetation in such an arid expanse, a wild horse slinks out from behind an outcrop, snorts as you, and hustles off into the distance. This landscape is filled with contrasts, and even though the people are few and far between, they seem to never stop smiling – or talking. Blink.

If you were to bastardise the concept of a square, these four thoughts would flirt with its corners, but in between those extremes lay a myriad of biomes and landscapes, all vastly different and all waiting to be explored. South Africa offers an incredible diversity in landscapes, wildlife and cultures to become acquainted with, and with a good road infrastructure these gems are largely very accessible.